
ERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



GEORG 



^JABOARDiMAN LI 
RISTIAN ETHICS 



THE ETHICAL 

: \.C ■ ; HG!J OF JE£ 





Class 

Book J 



PRESENTED BY 



The George Dana Boardman Lectureship 
in Christian Ethics 



(Founded Anno Domini 1899) 



Copyright by 
University of Pennsylvania 
1910 



The George Dana Boardman Lectureship 
in Christian Ethics 



(Founded Anno Domini 1899) 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

Delivered before 

The University of Pennsylvania 

December First, 1909 

By 

LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., LL.D. 



FIRST EDITION 



SCtfrra &mt MatibtXB Ha«^ 



PHILADELPHIA 

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

1910 






Gilt 

The Uai?*rsit? 

JAM 23 J8J5, 






"3 



THE FOUNDATION. 



o 



N June 6, 1899, the Trustees of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania accepted 
from, the Rev. George Dana Board- 
man, D.D., LL.D., and his wife a Deed of Gift, 
providing for a foundation to be known as "The 
Boardman Lectureship in Christian Ethics," 
the income of the fund to be expended solely 
for the purposes of the Trust. Dr. Boardman 
served the University for twenty-three years 
as Trustee, for a time as Chaplain, and often as 
Ethical Lecturer. After provision for refunding 
out of the said income, any depreciation which 
might occur in the capital sum, the remainder 
is to be expended in procuring the delivery in 
each year at the University of Pennsylvania, of 
one or more lectures on Christian Ethics from 
the standpoint of the life, example and teachings 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the publication 
in book form, of the said lecture or lectures 
within four months of the completion of their 

(3) 



4 The Foundation 

delivery. The volume in which they are printed 
shall always have in its forefront a printed state- 
ment of the history, the outline and terms of 
the Foundation. 

On July 6, 1899, a Standing Committee on 
"The Boardman Lectureship in Christian 
Ethics" was constituted, to which shall be com- 
mitted the nominations of the lecturers and the 
publications of the lectures in accordance with 
the Trust. 

On February 6, 1900, on recommendation of 
this committee, the Rev. George Dana Board- 
man, D.D., LL.D., was appointed Lecturer on 
Christian Ethics on the Boardman Foundation 
for the current year. 



THE OUTLINE. 
I. The Purpose. 



IRST, the purpose is not to trace the 

n history of the various ethical theories ; 
i this is already admirably done in our 
own noble University. Nor is it the purpose to 
teach theology, whether natural, Biblical, or 
ecclesiastical. But the purpose of this Lecture- 
ship is to teach Christian Ethics; that is to say, 
the practical application of the precepts and 
behavior of Jesus Christ to everyday life. 

And this is the greatest of the sciences. It is 
a great thing to know astronomy; for it is the 
science of mighty orbs, stupendous distances, 
majestic adjustments in time and space. It is 
a great thing to know biology; for it is the 
science of living organisms — of starting, growth, 
health, movements, life itself. It is a great 
thing to know law ; for it is the science of legis- 
lation, government, equity, civilization. It is 
a great thing to know philosophy; for it is the 

(S) 



6 The Outline 

science of men and things. It is a great thing 
to know theology; for it is the science of God. 
But what avails it to know everything in space 
from atom to star, everything in time from proto- 
plasm to Deity, if we do not know how to man- 
age ourselves amid the complex, delicate, ever- 
varying duties of daily life ? What will it profit 
a man if he gain the whole world — the world 
geographical, commercial, political, intellectual, 
and after all lose his own soul? What can a 
University give in exchange for a Christlike 
character? Thus it is that ethics is the science 
of sciences. Very significant is the motto of 
our own noble University — " Liter oe Sine Mori- 
bus Vance." 

And Jesus of Nazareth is the supreme ethical 
authority. When we come to receive from him 
our final awards, he will not ask, "What was 
your theory of atoms? What did you think 
about evolution? What was your doctrine of 
atonement? What was your mode of bap- 
tism?" But he will ask, "What did you do 
with Me? Did you accept Me as your personal 
standard of character? Were you a practical 



The Outline J 

everyday Christian?" Christian Ethics will 
be the judgment test. 

In sum, the purpose of this Lectureship in 
Christian Ethics is to build up human character 
after the model of Jesus Christ's. 

II. Range of the Lectureship. 

Secondly, the Range of the Lectureship. 
This range should be as wide as human society 
itself. The following is offered in way of gen- 
eral outline and suggestive hints, each hint 
being of course but a specific or technical illus- 
tration growing out of some vaster underlying 
Principle. 

i. Man's Heart-Nature. — And, first, man's 
religious nature. For example: Christian (not 
merely ethical) precepts concerning man's capac- 
ity for religion; worship; communion; divine- 
ness; immortality; duty of religious observ- 
ances; the Beatitudes; in brief, Manliness in 
Christ. 

2. Man's Mind-Nature. — Secondly, man's 
intellect-nature. For example: Christian pre- 
cepts concerning reason; imagination; inven- 



8 The Outline 

tion; aesthetics; language, whether spoken, 
written, sung, builded, painted, chiseled, acted, 
etc. 

3. Man's Society-Nature. — Thirdly, man's 
society-nature. For example: 

(a) Christian precepts concerning the per- 
sonal life; for instance: conscientiousness, hon- 
esty, truthfulness, charity, chastity, courage, 
independence, chivalry, patience, altruism, etc. 

(b) Christian precepts concerning the family 
life; for instance: marriage; divorce; duties of 
husbands, wives, parents, children, kindred, 
servants; place of woman, etc. 

(c) Christian precepts concerning the busi- 
ness life; for instance: rights of labor; rights of 
capital; right of pecuniary independence; living 
within means; life insurance; keeping morally 
accurate accounts; endorsing; borrowing; 
prompt liquidation; sacredness of trust-funds, 
personal and corporate; individual moral 
responsibility of directors and officers; trust- 
combinations; strikes; boycotting; limits of 
speculation; profiting by ambiguities; single 
tax; nationalization of property, etc. 



The Outline 9 

(d) Christian precepts concerning the civic 
life; for instance: responsibilities of citizen- 
ship; elective franchise; obligations of office; 
class-legislation; legal oaths; custom-house con- 
science; sumptuary laws; public institutions, 
whether educational, ameliorative, or reforma- 
tory; function of money; standard of money; 
public credit; civic reforms; caucuses, etc. 

{e) Christian precepts concerning the inter- 
national life ; for instance : treaties ; diplomacy ; 
war; arbitration ; disarmament ; tariff; reciproc- 
ity; mankind, etc. 

(/) Christian precepts concerning the eccle- 
siastical life ; for instance : sectarianism ; comity 
in mission fields; co-operation; unification of 
Christendom, etc. 

(g) Christian precepts concerning the aca- 
demic life; for instance: literary and scientific 
ideals ; professional standards of morality ; func- 
tion of the press; copyrights; obligations of 
scholarship, etc. 

In sum, Christian precepts concerning the 
tremendous problems of sociology, present and 
future. 



io The Outline 

Not that all the lecturers must agree at every 
point; often there are genuine cases of con- 
science, or reasonable doubt, in which a good 
deal can be justly said on both sides. The 
supreme point is this: Whatever the topic may 
be, the lecturer must discuss it conscientiously, 
in light of Christ's own teachings and character; 
and so awaken the consciences of his listeners, 
making their moral sense more acute. 

4. Man's Body-Nature. — Fourthly, man's 
body-nature. For example: Christian precepts 
concerning environment; heredity; health; 
cleanliness; temperance; self-control; athletics; 
public hygiene ; tenement-houses ; prophylactics ; 
the five senses; treatment of animals, etc. 

In sum, the range of topics for this Lecture- 
ship in Christian Ethics should include whatever 
tends to society -building, or perfectation of per- 
sonal character in Christ. Surely here is mate- 
rial enough, and this without any need of dupli- 
cation, for centuries to come. 



The Outline n 

III. Spirit of the Lectureship. 

Thirdly, the Spirit of this Lectureship. Every 
lecture must be presented from the standpoint 
of Jesus Christ. It must be distinctly under- 
stood, and the founder of the Lectureship can- 
not emphasize the point too strongly, that every 
lecture in these successive courses must be unam- 
biguously Christian ; that is, from the viewpoint 
of the divine Son of Mary. This Lectureship 
must be something more than a lectureship in 
moral philosophy, or in church theology; it 
must be a lectureship in Christian morality, or 
practical ethics from the standpoint of Christ's 
own personal character, example, and teachings. 

IV. Qualification of the Lecturer. 

Fourthly, the Qualification for the lecturer. 
The founder hopes that the lecturer may often 
be, perhaps generally, a layman; for instance: 
a merchant, a banker, a lawyer, a statesman, 
a physician, a scientist, a professor, an artist, 
a craftsman; for Christian ethics is a matter of 
daily practical life rather than of metaphysical 



12 The Outline 

theology. The founder cares not what the 
ecclesiastical connection of the lecturer may be ; 
whether a Baptist or an Episcopalian, a Quaker 
or a Latinist; for Christian ethics as Christ's 
behavior is not a matter of ecclesiastical ordina- 
tion or of sect. The only pivotal condition of 
the Lectureship in this particular is this: The 
lecturer himself must be unconditionally loyal 
to our only King, our Lord Jesus Christ; for 
Jesus Christ himself is the world's true, ever- 
lasting Ethics. 



THE ETHICAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS 



THE ETHICAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

Address by Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., at University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. i, 1909, 4 P.M. 



j ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In a pecu- 
=L. liar sense it may be said of Dr. Geo. 
SsBJ Dana Boardman that being dead he yet 
speaketh. Under this provision of his will he 
still continues his Christian ministry through 
the lips of others. It is a great privilege to be 
permitted to share with him in this work, to 
take it up and to carry it on, to speak on his 
behalf and in his place, and to share with you, 
his fellow citizens, in doing him honor in that 
which is, I think, the best way of doing any 
good man honor — by carrying on the work 
which he did in life and for which we honor 
him. 

With Bishop Whitaker's definition of Dr. 

Boardman's view of Jesus Christ, as a Supreme 

Master, and of his teachings, as uttered with 

unique authority, I am in hearty accord; but 

Us) 



16 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

I am not here this afternoon either to eulogize 
the Teacher or to defend the teaching. My 
object is simply to interpret that teaching, — to 
try and tell you what it seems to me to be. 
Possibly, nay, probably, some of these inter- 
pretations will not seem correct to some of you. 
I shall exercise the American privilege of stating 
how they seem to me ; and you will exercise the 
American privilege of disagreeing with me. At 
all events, I shall try simply to give my con- 
ception of the fundamental elements in that 
teaching, as illustrated by that life. 

Scholars have made a very careful and micro- 
scopic examination of the four Gospels. We 
know from the preface to Luke's Gospel that 
he edited it out of pre-existing materials; and 
there is good reason to believe that the Gospels 
of Matthew and of Mark were prepared in a 
similar manner. I have no disesteem for the 
labors of those scholars who have endeavored 
to ascertain what are these pre-existing materials 
and how far, in these Gospels, we have the 
exact teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and how 
far they may have been modified or colored 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 17 

by their reporters. But into those scholarly 

investigations I shall not enter this afternoon. 

I shall simply attempt to interpret to you the 

life and teachings of Jesus as we find them 

recorded in the four memorabilia of his life and 

instructions. In other words, what I shall try 

to do will be to interpret the life and teachings 

of Jesus as they were understood at the close 

of the first century by the Christian Church. 

That understanding is embodied, 

_ or at least indicated, by what 

The most J 

ancient creed in is the oldest creed in Christen- 
Christendom . . , . 1 . 

dom, a creed which is found in 

the Epistle to Titus: "The grace 
of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared 
unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodli- 
ness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, 
righteously, and godly in this present world, 
looking for that blessed hope and the glorious 
appearing of the great God and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ." 

You will observe of this creed, first, that 
it is vital, and, second, that it is comprehensive. 
Most of the creeds of Christendom state what 



1 8 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

we should think. This creed aims to state how 
we should live. "The grace of God hath ap- 
peared teaching us that we should live." And 
this creed is comprehensive. It covers the four 
relations in which man stands in this life: his 
relation to the material universe through his 
body; his relation to his fellow-man; his relation 
to God; and his relation to the future. What 
the author of this ancient creed thought was 
that Jesus Christ teaches us how we should live 
in this fourfold relation; and these are all the 
relations in which we stand and which our con- 
duct can affect; for we cannot alter the past. 
Our duty to ourselves in our relation to the ma- 
terial world through our body is expressed by the 
word "soberly;" our duty to our fellow-men, 
and incidentally to the brute creation, is ex- 
pressed by the word "righteously;" our duty 
to God is expressed by the word "godly," or 
devoutly, or piously; and our correct feeling 
respecting the future by the word "hopefully." 
What, then, did Jesus teach respecting 
sobriety, righteousness, godliness, hope? In 
other words, what did Jesus teach respecting 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 19 

our relations to the material world, to our fellow- 
men, to the Eternal, and to the future? You 
will not expect me in a single hour to give a com- 
plete and comprehensive interpretation of all 
these teachings which the Christian Church has 
been engaged in interpreting for many centuries. 
If, when I have finished, you shake your heads 
and say, "I think that was very imperfect," 
allow me to say, at the outset, I heartily agree 
with you; it will be very imperfect. 

In one striking passage Jesus 

pr^splr^s S ^ has tau S ht us that he does not 
think that either happiness or 

wealth or reputation or power is an end to be 
sought; and these four desires — the desire for 
pleasure, for wealth, for power, and for reputa- 
tion — are four very dominating desires in human 
life. To clear the way for what I shall have to say, 
let me first put this negative teaching of Jesus : 

Alas for you that are rich! for ye have received your 
consolation. Alas for you that are full! for ye shall 
hunger. Alas for you laughing ones! for ye shall 
mourn and weep. Alas for you, when all men shall 
speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false 
prophets. 



20 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

Here are four types of men whom we 
are apt to envy: the rich, the full, the 
merry, and the popular. And Christ pities all 
four. 

He does not pity the rich because he is rich; 
but he pities the rich because he has received 
his consolation — because, that is, he has gotten 
that for which he has been striving. He does 
not pity the satisfied because he is contented 
with what he has: he pities him because he has 
no aspirations, no outreachings, because he is 
full, because he desires nothing more in the fu- 
ture; for aspiration is the secret of progress. 
He does not pity all that laugh, but the laughing 
ones, the merrymakers, the men and women that 
think that life is one huge jest, that never take 
anything seriously, that count "all the world a 
stage, and men and women only players. " And 
he does not pity men who are thought well of; 
but he pities men when all men think well of 
them; because no man that has courage, vigor, 
forcefulness, and real and vital influence in mak- 
ing the world better than it is has all men think- 
ing well of him. The desire for happiness, the 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 21 

desire for wealth, the desire for rest or satisfac- 
tion, and the desire for popularity — Jesus dis- 
owned them all as legitimate ends of life. The 
men who made these desires their dominating 
motives were objects of Jesus' pity. Taking 
this statement as a clue, what did he teach 
respecting the world and the body? What 
respecting our relations to our fellow-men? 
What respecting our relations to God? What 
respecting our relations to the future? 

Jesus Christ was not an ascetic. 
as^tic 110 * ^ He did not condemn the desire 

for pleasure. He did not re- 
nounce the world. He did not call on his dis- 
ciples to renounce the world. He said of him- 
self that he came eating and drinking ; and that 
was so characteristic of him that men said of him 
that he was gluttonous and a wine-bibber. It 
is true that they lied; but you can tell a good 
deal about a man from the lies that people tell 
of him. They would not have told that kind of 
a lie of an ascetic. It was not that kind of a lie 
that they did tell of an ascetic— John the Bap- 
tist, who came neither eating nor drinking; the 



22 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

lie they told about him was, that "he hath a 
devil." Jesus Christ accepted a great many 
invitations to feasts, and from all sorts of people: 
from reputable people and from disreputable 
people, from men and women of fine social posi- 
tion, and from men of no social position at all. 
Nor do the Gospels anywhere contain a record 
of his having ever declined any invitation to a 
social gathering. He compared himself to a 
man playing in the market-place that the chil- 
dren might dance to his playing. In the parable 
of the prodigal son he spoke of music and dancing 
with apparent approval. He began his ministry 
by creating wine to prolong the festivities of a 
wedding occasion; and as, in that Oriental age 
and time, the wedding festivities ordinarily 
lasted three or four days at the least, it would 
seem to an average Puritan that they hardly 
needed prolongation. He ended his ministry 
by bringing his disciples around a table and say- 
ing to them, I have desired greatly to have this 
last supper with you; and I want you to re- 
member me in connection with the supper table. 
He wore a robe so precious that the soldiers 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 23 

would not rend it, but cast lots for it. He did 
not think good dress or good food or harmless 
pleasure was wicked. He did not think the 
material world a bad world. He rejoiced in 
it. He loved the trees and the flowers and the 
birds and the clouds and the mountains and the 
lakes. So far as he had any hours of rest and 
recreation, they were spent either on the moun- 
tain top or in a little sailboat on the Sea of 
Galilee. 

But, on the other hand, no one, 

eiricure 110 * "* l think > has ever accused J esus 
Christ of being an epicure. 

He did not live for good things. He did not care 
much about good things. He was born in a 
manger; he spent the earlier years of his life 
in a peasant cottage; when he began his minis- 
try, and from that time onward, he was without 
a home. To a disciple desirous to follow him, 
he said, I have not a place wherein to lay my 
head. He was invited at one time to a friend's 
house ; the housekeeper was busy getting a great 
supper for him, and she asked him to send her 
sister to help her. In reply he made it very 



24 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

clear that he did not care about a great supper. 
He cared a great deal more about a sympathetic 
listener than he did about an overloaded table. 
We have one incident in the Gospel narratives 
which shows what his ordinary food was. He 
had been preaching all day ; the sun was begin- 
ning to sink behind the western hills; the time 
had come to dismiss the assembly. But Jesus, 
it is said, had compassion on the multitude, 
and was unwilling to send them away fasting 
lest they faint by the way; for many of them 
were a long distance from their homes. To 
provide them with food he asked the disciples 
what they had. Seven barley loaves, somewhat 
resembling our sea biscuit, and two little fishes, 
caught from the Sea of Galilee, corresponding to 
our sardines. Such was apparently his ordinary 
food — that of the poorer peasant class. Jesus 
did not, on the one hand, treat material things 
as the source of evil, nor the animal appetites 
and passions as sinful; nor did he, on the other, 
yield himself to the animal appetites and pas- 
sions, or make them the source of his hap- 
piness. 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 25 

Jesus Christ did not draw lines; 

"Where shall we he did not sa y a11 thin g s are 
draw the line?" w i c k e d; nor did he draw a line 

and say, The things on one side 
of this line are wicked, and the things on the 
other side of this line are right. He did not 
prescribe rules for the regulation of conduct. 
Rules are temporary; principles are eternal. 
Christ formulated no rules; he interpreted prin- 
ciples. Sobriety is not conformity to rules; 
it is a principle of conduct, and even more a 
spirit of life. A few years ago some stir was 
made in this country by a now forgotten little 
book bearing some such title as "What Jesus 
Christ Would Do if He Came to Chicago." I 
do not know what Jesus Christ would do if he 
came to Philadelphia. I heard the other day 
that a college evangelist told the students that if 
Jesus Christ were in college he would be captain 
of a football team. I do not know whether he 
would be the captain of a football team or not. 
But I am very sure that, if he were the captain 
of a football team, the man on the team who 
tried to win success by foul play would get a 



26 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

rebuke he would remember all the days of his 
life. And I am sure that if he came to Chicago 
or New York or Philadelphia, the men that are 
corrupting our great cities would be branded 
with a hot iron and would carry the brand with 
them for the rest of their lives. My total ab- 
stinence friend is very sure that Jesus Christ 
would be a total abstainer if he were in America ; 
my friend who makes a moderate use of wine 
and beer is sure he would not be a total abstainer 
if he were in America. I do not undertake to 
say whether he would be a total abstainer or 
not; but I am very sure that he would not 
confound total abstinence and temperance. 
He would not think that total abstinence from 
alcoholic beverages is the same as the virtue of 
self-control. He would not preach such a doc- 
trine of temperance that a man who eats pie until 
his flesh is as soft as pastry and drinks coffee until 
his color is as yellow as coffee could call himself 
a temperance man because he did not drink beer. 
The minister is continually asked to-day, 
"Where shall I draw the line?" And the an- 
swer of Jesus Christ, I think, would be, There 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 2J 

are no lines. He would not teach that knocking 
balls around on a green lawn is right because that 
is croquet, and knocking balls around on a green 
table is wrong because that is billiards. He 
would not teach that cards are right if you 
have historical names on them, and wrong if 
you have spades and hearts on them. He would 
not teach that it is right to have a tableau or a 
charade in a church sociable, and wrong to see 
a play given by professionals in a theater. He 
would not teach that it is wrong to wear precious 
jewels and right to wear precious flowers. He 
would teach this: No enjoyment is right that 
does not help to develop manhood and woman- 
hood ; and no enjoyment is wrong that does help 
to develop manhood and womanhood. What 
is luxury? A comfort that enervates. What 
is comfort? A luxury that does not enervate. 
The life is more than meat; the body is more 
than raiment. Personality is more than things. 
All things are right if they are contributing to 
character; all things are wrong if they are not 
contributing to character. That was the essence of 
Christ's teaching concerning our relation to the 



28 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

material world. Temperance is the control 
of the body by the spirit for ministry to the 
spirit. Nothing less than this deserves the name 
of temperance. 

What did Jesus Christ teach 
Accumulating about righteousness? What, 

does no*? JCSUS that is > did he teach about our 
condemn relations to our fellow-men? 

We have seen that he did not 
condemn the desire for pleasure. Neither did he 
condemn the desire for acquisition. A Social- 
istic friend said to me the other day, "Do you 
know there are some people who really think 
that it is right to be rich ! ' ' Jesus Christ was one 
of the men who think that it is right to be rich. 
He did not condemn wealth. On the contrary, 
he approved of wealth; he approved of the 
accumulation of wealth, and he approved of the 
use of accumulated wealth to accumulate more 
wealth. He did this in a well-known parable. 
He told the story of a man who gathered his 
servants together and gave to one servant five 
talents, and to another servant two talents, 
and to another servant one talent, and left them 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 29 

to manage the property. When he came back, 
the man who had the five talents had traded 
with the five and made five more talents, and 
Jesus commended him; and the servant who 
had the two talents had traded with the two and 
made four more talents, and Jesus commended 
him; and the third man, who had hid the lord's 
money in the earth believing that it is not right 
to make wealth, Jesus condemned as a slothful 
servant. I am aware that we have spiritualized 
this parable ; and we have done well to spiritualize 
it. But the parable is none the less true without a 
spiritual interpretation ; its direct and immediate 
meaning is true as well as its indirect and spirit- 
ual meaning. Jesus never condemned thrift or 
industry or the accumulation of property. 

What Jesus did condemn was making the 
accumulation of property an end in life. Jesus 
very rarely used the language of contempt. I 
do not think that he ever called a man a fool 
but once. That was in a story he told of a cer- 
tain rich man who had his barns full to over- 
flowing and who said, "What shall I do ? I have 
more property invested than I know what to do 



30 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

with; where shall I invest what is coming in?" 

He said, "I know what I will do; I will build 

some more big barns" — I will get some more 

boxes in the safe deposit company, would be the 

American form — "and I will try and find a place 

for my overflowing wealth there." The end 

of the story I will give in the words of the Master : 

"God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy 

soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall 

those things be, which thou hast provided?" 

To Jesus accumulation was not 

„ - , , wrong. But to accumulate for 

Hoarding wealth 

Jesus does the sake of accumulation was 

both sin and folly. It was 
making the man the servant 
of things, not things the servant of man. In 
interpreting the words of Jesus we need to be 
careful not to fall into the error into which some 
interpreters, both orthodox and radical, have 
fallen — that of interpreting them as though 
they were the words of a revised statute. In 
point of fact there are only six words of Jesus 
which we possess, the words addressed by him 
to the maiden whom he raised from the dead, 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 31 

" Talitha cumi;" and the cry upon the cross 
"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ! " These are Ara- 
maic; Jesus taught in Aramaic. All the other 
words of Jesus we have translated into the 
Greek ; and most of us have that Greek trans- 
lated into English; that is to say, instead of 
having the very words of Jesus, we have the 
translation of a translation of his teaching. 
This of itself is a sufficient and conclusive reason 
why we should not literalize in our interpreta- 
tion of the words of Jesus. But if we are going 
to literalize, let us literalize consistently and not 
inconsistently. My radical friend declares that 
the teachings of Jesus are not practicable, that 
we cannot carry them out in life, and that we do 
not pretend to do so. Jesus, he reminds us, 
said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon 
earth;" and Christians do universally lay up for 
themselves treasures upon earth; every man 
that owns a house and lot, or a share of stock in a 
corporation, or a life insurance policy, or money 
in a savings bank, has laid up for himself treasure 
upon earth. But Jesus did not say, "Lay not up 
for yourselves treasures upon earth." He said, 



2,2 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

' ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth 
where moth and rust doth corrupt and where 
thieves break through and steal. ' ' And no sensible 
person does. Moth and rust do not get at 
Mr. Rockefeller's oil wells, nor at the Sugar 
Trust's sugar, and thieves do not often break 
through and steal a railway or an insurance 
company or a savings bank. 

What Jesus condemned was hoarding wealth; 
he never condemned possessing it or using it for 
the benefit of society. In the first century the 
rich man bought jewels with his money, put them 
in a pot and buried them in the earth, or he 
bought rich garments with his money and hung 
them in his house or displayed them on his per- 
son. Thieves and rust got at the buried treas- 
ure; moths at the closeted treasure. There are 
still a few ignorant, distrustful foreigners who 
tie up their money in a stocking and hide it in a 
trunk, where thieves break through and steal; 
and there are a few ignorant and extravagant 
society women who put their money in inartistic 
dresses made for display, which a change in 
fashions makes useless before the moths can get 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 33 

at them. These exceptional perpetrators of 
folly may well take the counsel of Jesus to heart. 
But the great mass of American wealth is active ; 
it is serving the community; it is building a 
railway to open a new country to settlement 
by the homeless; it is operating a railway to 
carry grain from the harvests of the West to the 
unfed millions of the East; it is extracting coal 
from the mines for warmth, and oil from the 
wells for light, and grain from the prairies for 
food, and steel and copper from the mountain- 
sides for instruments of toil. We do not lay up 
for ourselves treasures where moth and rust 
doth corrupt. We harness it and set it at work 
in innumerable forms of beneficial activity. Not 
having wealth and using it for the world's better- 
ment, but hoarding it unused, Jesus condemned. 
This hoarding of wealth, this 
Oppression and acquisition and possession of it 

poo/ he ° ^ or * ts own sa ^ e > ne condemns, 

condemns because it inevitably carries 

with it, if not oppression of the 
poor, at least indifference to them and neglect 
of them. Nowhere in the literature of any 



34 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

country will be found a more bitter invective 
than that which he pronounced against the men 
who devour widow's houses and for a pretense 
make long prayers. Outside the walls of Jeru- 
salem, in the valley of Gehenna, a bonfire was 
always burning, on which the offal of the city 
was cast to be destroyed. "Serpents, race of 
vipers," he cried to these pious robbers of the 
poor, "how can ye escape the judgment of 
Gehenna?" You who pride yourselves on your 
social position and your orthodox religion are as 
the offal of the universe. How can you escape 
being cast out and destroyed? 

But these are not the only rich men whom 
he denounced. He condemned not only the 
rich who oppressed the poor, but, in almost 
equally vigorous terms, the rich who neglected 
the poor. In orthodox Pharisaism was current 
a pictured underworld, afterwards more fully 
portrayed in mediaeval literature, of a tormenting 
hell, to which were condemned the pagans for 
their worship of false gods. Twice Jesus used 
the picture to enforce a lesson very different 
from that of either Pharisaism or mediae valism. 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 35 

Once he used it in a dramatic parable com- 
posed of two scenes. In the first scene a rich 
man was depicted, clothed in purple and fine 
linen, faring sumptuously every day, and wholly 
indifferent to the poor man who lay uncared 
for at his gate. Even the dogs had more com- 
passion, and came to lick the poor man's sores. 
In the second scene both have died: the rich 
man is buried ; the poor man is carried by angels 
to Abraham's bosom. And the rich man is 
seen in hell, not for worshiping false gods, 
not for oppressing the poor, not for being rich, 
but for being indifferent to the claims of 
humanity. 

In the other teaching all nations are pictured 
by Jesus as gathered before the judgment 
throne of the Messiah. The awards of life are 
pronounced. And it is not the pagans who have 
worshiped false gods, nor the heretics who 
have believed false doctrine, nor the schismatics 
who have separated themselves from the Church, 
nor merely the cruel and tyrannical who have 
oppressed their fellow-men, but those who have 
done nothing to relieve the stranger, and the 



36 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

naked, and the sick, and the imprisoned, who 
are condemned as accursed to everlasting fire 
prepared for the devil and his angels. 

The anathemas of the Church 
The age of have been leveled against the 

humanity unbelievers in Christianity; the 

anathemas of Jesus are leveled 
only against the practitioners of inhumanity. 
But in his teaching neglect is no less an inhuman- 
ity than oppression. I cannot doubt that 
Jesus would esteem the age of hospitals and 
orphanages, of insane asylums and reforma- 
tories, of kindergartens and social settlements, 
more Christian than the age of creeds and 
catechisms and of religious conformity enforced 
by religious persecution. But my imagination 
is not equal to conceiving the commingled scorn 
and indignation with which the author of the 
parables of the Rich Fool and of Dives and 
Lazarus would address those men in America, 
however little or however great their wealth, 
whose whole ambition is to acquire and possess, 
and still to acquire and possess, who make wealth 
the standard of success and the dollar mark the 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 37 

measure of manhood, and who never employ 
either their wealth or their ability in a serious 
endeavor to grapple with the great problem of 
poverty which still confronts our modern civili- 
zation. 

And Jesus condemned acquisi- 

The folly of a life tion for its own sake, not only 
of mere money- 
making because it wronged others, but 

also because it wronged the 

man who was making the acquisition. "What 

shall it profit a man," he said, "if he gain the 

whole world and lose his own life?" That 

does not mean, What shall it profit a man if 

he gets this world and loses another? There 

are a good many Americans to-day who think 

the other world is so uncertain that a world in 

the hand is worth two in the bush. That was 

not Jesus' question. His question is, What 

shall it profit a man if he loses himself and gets 

things? What profit to a man who can gather 

from the world all the choice foods that can be 

found in the world's markets and spread them 

out upon his table, if in the process he has gotten 

dyspepsia and cannot eat them? What profit 



38 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

if he is able to buy pictures and hang them on 
his walls, and lacks either the taste or the time 
to look at them? What profit if he can store 
his house with royal books and cares for no books 
but his ledger and his journal? A man does not 
own a book because he has it in his house; he 
owns it when he can put it in his head. He 
does not own a picture because it hangs on his 
walls; he owns it when it can delight his heart. 
A man of wealth not long since built a country 
house in the neighborhood of one of our great 
cities. No country house is complete without 
a library. No library is complete without books. 
But the shelves in this library when it was fin- 
ished were too shallow to hold books. So what 
does he do but buy of a publisher shop-worn 
copies in fine bindings of classical English works, 
cut the books in two, leaving the backs intact, 
glue them into the shelves, lock the glass doors, 
lose the key, put a great lounge against the book- 
case — and behold his library! "What shall it 
profit a man if he gain the world and lose his 
own life ? Or what shall a man give in exchange 
for his life?" 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 39 

Jesus did not condemn the desire 
Jesus did not for power; on the contrary, he 
fo°r n p:we n ro? S an Seated approval of it, be- 
use of force cause he offered it as a reward. 

He said to his disciples, "Ye 
shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel. " That is power. In one of his 
parables he represented the lord in the story as 
saying to the loyal and efficient servant, "Thou 
hast been faithful over a few things, I will make 
thee ruler over many things." That is power. 
He approved the desire of men for power, for 
he appealed to it as to a worthy motive. 

Nor did he condemn all use of force. He 
did not draw any line between physical and 
moral power, and condemn the one and approve 
the other. He began his ministry by an act 
which had all the effect of using physical power ; 
he ended it by another of a similar character. 

The Temple at Jerusalem was built in a 
series of courts one within the other. The 
outermost of these courts was called the Court 
of the Gentiles, because no Gentile, under pain 
of death, could pass its portals into the court 



40 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

within. Graft is not a modern invention, nor 
rings a modern creation. They existed in Pales- 
tine in the time of Jesus, and were not on so large 
a scale as in our time because Palestine was not 
so large as the United States. Worshipers 
coming up to Jerusalem had to exchange their 
foreign coin for the Hebrew coin in which alone 
the priest's charges could be paid, and had to 
purchase doves, sheep, and oxen for their sacri- 
fices. A corrupt ring had been formed by the 
civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Jerusalem ; 
the Court of the Gentiles had been converted 
into a market-place; there the money-changers 
plied their trade; there the doves were caged 
and the sheep and cattle were stalled; and the 
clink of the coin and the cooing of the doves and 
the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the 
cattle mingled with the echoes of the Temple 
music stealing out through the open doors. 
The priest could always find a reason for reject- 
ing the money or the sacrifice offered by the 
worshiper if it had not been obtained in this 
Temple market-place. In short, there was a 
trust; and the profits from the extra charges 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 41 

imposed by the monopoly were divided between 
the priests and the politicians. Jesus, coming 
up from his baptismal consecration to his min- 
istry to Jerusalem, beheld this scene with indig- 
nation. He was as yet unfriended and unknown. 
It is doubtful whether he had any disciple with 
him, unless possibly John, to whose pen we are 
indebted for, I think, the most authentic narra- 
tive of this incident. Jesus stooped down, 
gathered from the Temple floor some of the 
rushes used to bed the cattle, wove them into 
a lash, and, advancing on the throng of fright- 
ened thieves, drove them without ceremony 
from their desecrating market-place. Take 
these things hence, he cried; ye have made out 
of the house of God a den of thieves. Afterward, 
when John, in a vision in the Isle of Patmos, saw 
a figure whose eyes were like a flame of fire, and 
his feet like fine brass, and his voice like the 
sound of many waters, and his words cut like 
a two-edged sword, he recognized the leader 
whom he had seen that day in the Temple, with 
a countenance like the countenance of an angel 
of God, very terrible. 



42 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

The other act was at the end of Jesus' life. 
He had spent an evening in quiet conversation 
with his disciples. He had met with them 
about that ever-memorable supper-table, hinted 
to them of his approaching death, and endeav- 
ored to prepare them for the tragedy. Did he 
know just what form that tragedy would take? 
Or how soon it would be consummated? We 
cannot tell, for we have only the reports of dis- 
ciples who evidently did not know then, but 
who interpreted his prophetic words by the 
almost immediately following events. But he 
knew that Judas had gone out to betray his 
present resting-place to his enemies. He arose 
from the table and bade his disciples follow him 
to a garden outside the city walls. It was ap- 
parently a familiar resort to them and to him. 
He had said his last word to them, and, with- 
drawing first from the eleven, then from his three 
most intimate friends, asked them to watch 
while he retreated into the shadow of the trees 
for prayer. Could he have escaped? Whither? 
He had few friends in Judea, and none that 
could afford him any refuge against the conspir- 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 43 

acy for his death. And to have fled to Galilee, 
even could he have done so, would have been a 
confession of weakness and defeat after his chal- 
lenge to the corrupt priesthood under the roof 
of the Temple which they considered their 
peculiar domain. But he did not wish to be 
taken unawares; wished at least one hour of 
quiet, uninterrupted communion with his Father 
before the day of horror dawned on him and his 
disciples. So he asked— his last request — his 
three friends to watch for him. But they could 
not or would not realize that so great a crisis 
was near. They did not watch ; they slept. It 
was not they, it was he who heard the tramp of 
the police as they marched with measured step 
across the valley to seek him in the garden which 
Judas knew so well. The echoes of their foot- 
fall brought his Father's answer to his prayer; 
the cup could not pass from him unless he drank 
it. And he went forward to put himself between 
the arresting party and his disciples that he 
might save them by surrendering himself. Let 
John, an eye-witness of what followed, tell the 
story here. "Jesus therefore, knowing all things 



44 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

that should come upon him, went forth, and said 
unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered 
him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, 
I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, 
stood with them. As soon as he had said unto 
them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to 
the ground. Then asked he them again, Whom 
seek ye? and they said, Jesus of Nazareth. 
Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he; 
if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way. " 
The hint was not lost on the disciples, who made 
good their escape, while Jesus was bound and 
led away. It is idle to ask whether it was 
natural or supernatural power, physical or moral 
power, that made the guard fall back and give 
the disciples an opportunity to escape. Is 
hypnotism physical or moral, or the two com- 
bined? It is enough that, in the expulsion of 
the traders in the beginning of his ministry and 
in the momentary repulse of the arresting guard 
to save his disciples from arrest at the end of 
his ministry, Jesus produced all the effect of 
physical power. He did, whether by natural 
or supernatural power it is idle to inquire and 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 45 

perhaps impossible to judge, what, if he is an 
example, we have a right in similar circum- 
stances to do by the exercise of such power as 
we possess, provided we are inspired by the same 
unselfish and chivalric spirit. 

Nor did Jesus take the ground that has some- 
times been taken in modern times, that physical 
force may be used in self-defense, but not other- 
wise. He never used it himself in self-defense; 
he rebuked Peter when Peter attempted to use 
it in his defense; and in one notable passage 
he apparently — again I say I would not lay too 
much stress on the seeming words of Jesus — he 
apparently condemned every kind of forcible 
resistance in self-defense. The passage is this: 

Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn 
to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee 
at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a 
mile, go with him twain. 

To smite you on the cheek is personal violence: 
do not resist that. To sue you at the law is to 
employ legal means of injustice: do not resist 



46 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

that. To compel you to go a mile is govern- 
mental injustice: do not resist that. This is 
what Jesus seems to say. He does not forbid 
all use of force. And he does not draw the line 
at self-defense. What then? Jesus himself 
seems to me to give the answer to this question : 
"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, 
Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exer- 
cise dominion over them, and they that are 
great exercise authority upon them. But it 
shall not be so among you: but whosoever will 
be great among you, let him be your minister: 
and whosoever will be chief among you, let him 
be your servant." In effect Jesus said to his 
disciples: "I do not condemn the use of the 
world, but use it in service; I do not condemn 
the acquisition of wealth, but acquire it for 
service ; I do not condemn the exercise of power, 
but exercise it for service. " 

But service was not, in Christ's 
Godliness thought, to be indirect and in- 

cidental and occasional service, 
such as one man may furnish to his fellow-men 
as he goes through life. There was a unity to 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 47 

Christ's life. If we wish to know the unity of 
that life, we must ask what he taught is our 
relation to God. What did he mean by Godli- 
ness? 

There has been a great deal of theological 
discussion on the question, What was Christ's 
pre-existent relation to the Father and what is 
his post-resurrection relation to the Father? 
These are questions in speculative theology, 
and my subject this afternoon is not theological 
but ethical. I consider simply what he 
taught are our relations to the Father, and 
what light the teaching of his own relation to 
the Father in his earthly life throws on our life 
problems. 

Jesus was not an agnostic. To 
Jesus was not him God was not the Unknown 
deislf or^ and Unknowable. Nor was he 

theologian a ^eist- God was not an hypo- 

thesis to account for phenomena, 
a hypothetical Creator to explain the creation. 
He never argued the existence of a God, nor do 
his teachings contain any element out of which 
such an argument can be constructed. Nor was 



48 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

he a theologian. He did not present any philo- 
sophy about God, any analysis of God's char- 
acter, any attempted catalogue of his attributes, 
nor even any definition of him. One looks in 
vain in his teaching for any such science of God 
as is attempted in the Westminster Shorter 
Catechism : 

God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, 
in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, 
and truth. 

The nearest approach to this is his statement 
that God is spirit, and is to be spiritually wor- 
shiped. 

Nor was the relation of Jesus to God that of a 
servant to a master or a subject to a king. He 
never calls himself the servant of God, he never 
calls God king, or sovereign, or the moral 
governor of the universe. He does not discuss 
the power or the sovereignty or the authority of 
God. Conclusions as to the sovereignty and 
authority of God may be deduced from his 
teaching ; but they are incidental to that teach- 
ing, not the direct subject of it. 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 49 

To him God was a companion, 
God man's a comra de, a friend, a personal 

comrade experience. He exhausted 

language in the endeavor to put 
before his disciples the intimacy of this relation- 
ship. He is my Father, he said; he always 
hears me; I know him and understand him; he 
knows me and understands me; we work to- 
gether; what I do, I do by the grace of his 
companionship ; what I say, I say by the grace 
of his inspiring ; I am in him ; he is in me ; I and 
my Father are one. Out of these and kindred 
declarations theology has constructed a com- 
plicated theory of the personality of God. 
Whether that theory is correct or not I do not 
here consider. I am concerned to-day only with 
the earthly relation of Jesus to God and the 
teaching of Jesus concerning our earthly relation 
to God. And no reader of the Gospels can 
doubt, whatever his theology, that this relation- 
ship was, in the mind of Jesus, one of most inti- 
mate companionship. 

Nor can it be doubted that he sought to give 
something of this companionship to his disciples. 



50 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

He not only said, God is my Father, he told his 
disciples to call God " Our Father. " In the one 
prayer of his for his disciples of which we have 
a report, he said, I have come, Father, that they 
may know thee ; and I have made them to know 
thee ; and thy utterance of thyself to me I have 
given to them ; and I pray that as thou art in me 
and I in thee, that so they may be one in us. 
Jesus did not come to teach us about God, but 
to introduce us to God, to make us personally 
acquainted with him. It is one thing to give 
to a friend an analytical description of your 
father; it is quite another thing to bring your 
friend into your home and introduce him to your 
father. Jesus did not do the first ; he did do the 
second. 

The relationship which he sought to establish 
between his disciples and God was not that of an 
obedient subject to a great lawgiver; it was 
that of a loyal and loving son to a just and gener- 
ous father. It was not that of mere obedience; 
it was that of spiritual loyalty. Two Germans 
come to America. They are equally obedient 
to its laws. But one means, as soon as he has 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 51 

earned a little money, to go back to his father- 
land; the other, enamored of American institu- 
tions and the American spirit, means at the 
earliest possible day to become an American 
citizen. One is a German living in America; the 
other is an American born in Germany. What 
Christ wished for his disciples was, not obedient 
foreigners, such as the first German, but loyal 
citizens of the kingdom of God. 

It was this that marked the 
Pharisaism is difference between the teaching 

obedience to law ; f Jesus and the teaching of 

Christianity is 

love and loyalty the Pharisee. The Pharisees 

to a Father , „ - .. T , 

were not all hypocrites. It 

would not be far wrong to call 
them the Puritans of the first century. To them 
God was a lawgiver, and righteousness was obedi- 
ence to his laws. Some of the Pharisees — those 
of the more liberal school — laid emphasis on the 
moral laws of God as they were embodied in the 
two laws, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, 
and thy neighbor as thyself. Others insisted 



52 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

on exact obedience to all the rules and regula- 
tions of the Levitical code and added to them 
an elaborate ceremonial ritual which they taught 
had been handed down from ancient days by 
oral tradition. But widely as they differed in 
this important respect, they agreed in regarding 
obedience to law as the essence of righteousness. 
Jesus taught a different lesson. To Jesus 
God was not a lawgiver but a Father, and the 
crown of righteousness was not civic obedience 
to legal enactments, but sympathetic fellowship 
with, and spiritual loyalty to an adored Father. 
So he said very little about law; and very little 
about rewards for obedience and penalty for 
disobedience. One of his stories was told to 
illustrate this difference between his teaching 
and that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees, who 
counted themselves the servants of the Most 
High, thought that they were earning by their 
obedience to their king a seat at the king's 
table in the kingdom of God. Said Jesus to 
them : When your servant has finished his plow- 
ing or the feeding of your cattle and comes in 
from his work, do you ask him to sit down at 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 53 

your table with you ? Do you thank him because 
he has done the work he was hired to do? I 
think not. If you are only servants of the Most 
High, do not expect a reward; you have only 
done what was your duty to do. 

To Jesus, law was not an end but a means. 
If obedience to the Sabbath law impeded a useful 
service to humanity, or involved the sacrifice 
of the life of even an ox or an ass, or even the 
discomfort of temporary hunger, it was to be set 
aside. Man was lord of the Sabbath because 
the Sabbath was made for man. Not to abstain 
from killing, but to abstain from unjustifiable 
anger; not to abstain from adultery, but to 
abstain from impure desire; not to abstain from 
profanity, but to be simple and sincere in heart — 
this is righteousness. The blessing is not on 
those who have obeyed either the ceremonial 
or the moral law, but on those who are filled 
with the spirit of a great and inspiring peace, 
who are pure in heart, who are full of mercy, 
who, knowing their imperfections, are inspired 
by aspirations for a better life. And when he 
was accused of setting aside the law by these 



54 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

teachings, he replied: You do not understand. 

I am come not to destroy the law, nor yet to 

teach obedience to the law, but to arouse and 

inspire that life of doing justly, loving mercy, 

and walking humbly with God which it was the 

object of law to promote. I am come to fulfill 

the law. 

The most important theme in 

the teaching of Jesus, around 
The road to & J 

fellowship with which all his other teaching 
centered, was this, How can we 
come into this intimacy of com- 
panionship with God? And to that question 
his answer was, Not by studying philosophies 
about God, nor by devoting one's self to syna- 
gogue or Temple worship of God, nor even by 
obedience to the supposed law of God, but by 
working for God and with God to accomplish 
God's purposes in the history of the race. To 
have our own purpose to serve, our own ends to 
accomplish, our own will to achieve, and to 
desire God as a sleeping partner, who will not 
interfere needlessly with our methods, but will 
help us through any difficult crisis in our affairs — 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 55 

that is false religion — common, but false. To 
see that God has a purpose to accomplish, a will 
to achieve, and to be eager to share with him, 
at whatever cost to ourselves, in accomplishing 
that purpose — that is true religion. 

This was the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. 
He never asked the Father, Help me to accom- 
plish my will ; he asked the Father, Help me to 
accomplish thy will. This was the secret of his 
spiritual life: not merely dependence on his 
Father; not merely obedience — doing the will of 
the Father; not merely resignation — bearing 
without complaint the burdens laid on him by 
the will of his Father; but consecration — the 
identification of his will with the will of his 
Father. The supreme masterful wish of his 
life was to accomplish his Father's will. I have 
come to do the will of him that sent me; my 
meat is to do the will of him that sent me ; my 
teaching is not mine but the teaching of him 
that sent me; the works that I do are his and 
bear witness to him that sent me; he that sent 
me has given me my commission and how am I 
straitened till it is accomplished : these are some 



56 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

of the sentences scattered through his teaching 
that interpret his spirit. Self-will is not the 
strongest will. The strongest will is one devoted 
to a great mission and loyal to a great leader. 
Such was the will of Jesus; it was set to do his 
Father's will and accomplish his Father's 
purpose. 

The only story we have of his 
passfon boyhood indicates how early 

in life this spirit pervaded him. 
He went up with his parents in Passover week 
to Jerusalem; became separated from them; 
and after they had gone a day's journey from 
the city they returned to seek him, a boy twelve 
years of age. They found him, not gazing at 
the city sights, nor visiting the city shops, nor 
listening to the splendid, if barbaric, music of 
the Temple, nor fascinated by its gorgeous ritual. 
They found him in the one university of the Holy 
Land asking of the rabbis there the questions 
about the kingdom of God which his synagogue 
teachers could not answer. And he was naively 
surprised that they did not know where to find 
him. Where else could he be than where he 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 57 

could take advantage of this one occasion of his 
life to learn something from the great men of 
his nation about his Father's business. 

His whole life is absolutely dominated by this 
Spirit of consecration to Another's will. He 
begins his public ministry in the synagogue at 
Nazareth, the village of his boyhood home, by a 
sermon in which he publicly dedicates himself 
to that service which his Father had appointed 
to him: 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

Because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings 
to the poor: 

He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to pro- 
claim release to the captives, 

And recovering of sight to the blind, 

To set at liberty them that are bruised, 

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. 

To the work thus outlined he devotes his brief 
life without hasting, without resting, without 
deviation. If men are hungry, he feeds them; 
if ignorant, he teaches them; if in sorrow, he 
comforts them; if discouraged, he heartens 
them. He is equally ready to preach to admir- 



58 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

ing crowds in Galilee and to execrating and 
tumultuous crowds in Jerusalem; to a congre- 
gation of thousands on the hillside, to a con- 
gregation of hundreds gathered upon the shore 
of the lake, to one lone outcast woman by the 
well. No man is too high or too intrenched 
for his rebuke, none too lowly, too despised, 
or too sinful for his sympathy. His Father's 
spirit is the secret of his patient love for his 
disciples, which even the treachery of Judas 
Iscariot cannot exhaust; it is the secret of his 
indignation against the profaners of the Temple 
who have turned his Father's house into a 
den of thieves. At last the tragic end draws 
nigh. Despite the remonstrance of his disciples, 
he marches up to Jerusalem, they following 
sorrowfully and perplexed after him. He es- 
capes from the city to his accustomed retreat in 
a garden in the environs. His prayer there is 
not a prayer of resignation, but of dedication. 
His request is not denied, but granted. For his 
request is, Not my will, but thine be done. For 
answer, the cup of anguish which Judas Iscariot, 
the apostate disciple, Caiaphas, the recreant 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 59 

priest, and Pilate, the coward governor, hand 
to him, is to him the cup which his Father gives 
to him, and he takes it without shrinking. Only 
once in that last terrible hour does his spirit 
seem to fail; it is when, in the darkness, it seems 
to him as though, after all, he had somehow 
failed of his Father's purpose, and he cries out 
with the cry of an orphan, My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me? And then the great 
peace that comes with the consciousness of his 
Father's will fulfilled, descends upon him, and 
his life ends with the triumphant cry of tri- 
umph, It is finished, and he escapes from the 
malice of his enemies to the refuge of his Father, 
with the words, Father, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit. 

Godliness is more than correct belief about 
God, more than obedience to God's law; more 
than trust in God's protecting care. It is the 
consecration of one's life and all its energies to 
the accomplishment of God's will in the world 
in a spirit of joyous, loyal companionship with 
him. 

What is God's will? What is he seeking to 



60 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

accomplish in the world ? What was Jesus seek- 
ing to accomplish? What did he commission 
his disciples to accomplish for the future? In 
other words, what was to him that "blessed 
hope" to which he looked, and which he put 
before his followers as their motive to action and 
inspiration to life? 

Jesus assumed that the men to 
Jesus ° pe whom he addressed himself were 

children of God and shared their 
Father's immortality. He spoke to them as 
immortals ; not as machines, not as a mere higher 
type of animals. But he said very little about 
a celestial life hereafter. In one parable he de- 
scribed Lazarus as in Abraham's bosom, using 
a common figure of his time. In his picture of 
the Judgment Day he portrayed those who had 
given themselves to the service of their less 
fortunate brethren as inheriting a kingdom pre- 
pared for them from the foundation of the world. 
In his last words to his disciples he comforted 
them with the assurance that this world is not 
God's only world; that there are other dwelling- 
places; and that he was going to prepare a place 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 61 

for his followers. On the cross he promised 
the repentant brigand, "This day thou shalt be 
with me in paradise." But he furnished no 
picture of a future celestial existence. Our 
imagined scenes of Elysian fields, of a holy city, 
of a temple with white-robed choirs chanting 
their chorals or playing orchestra-like on harps, 
are not derived from the teachings of Jesus. In 
so far as they are Biblical at all, they are derived 
from the Book of Revelation. The hope which 
Jesus put before his disciples was that of a king- 
dom of God on the earth. For this he bade them 
pray: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven." This he promised to 
them as the Father's gift: "It is your Father's 
good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 

The Hebrews were a peculiar 

Heb£w P pe°ople * P eo P le in more res P ects than one - 
They were peculiar in their con- 
ception of God ; peculiar in their ideas of what 
was acceptable to him ; peculiar in their ethical 
ideals; peculiar in their expectations. The 
people of antiquity generally looked backward 
for their Golden Age; the Hebrews looked 



62 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

forward; their Golden Age was yet to come. 
Their prophets told them of a good time coming, 
a new social order in which the authority 
of Jehovah would be universally recognized and 
his just and humane laws would be universally 
obeyed. There would be no war: the imple- 
ments of war would be beaten into implements 
of agriculture. There would be no despotism: 
law would go out of Zion, the only enforcement 
needed the religious consciousness of mankind. 
There would be an equable distribution of prop- 
erty: every man would sit under his own vine 
and fig-tree. There would be universal educa- 
tion: no man would need to teach his neighbors. 
There would be no harsh fathers, no heart- 
breaking, disobedient children: the hearts of the 
fathers would be turned to the children and the 
hearts of the children to the fathers. They fore- 
told a Coming One who would bring in this king- 
dom of righteousness, peace, and universal wel- 
fare. This Coming One was termed in the 
Hebrew tongue the Messiah, in the Greek tongue 
the Christ. It is true that sometimes the lan- 
guage of the prophet seems to imply that Israel 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 63 

was itself the Messiah; but generally he is per- 
sonified — sometimes as a Leader, sometimes 
as a Prophet, sometimes as a King, sometimes 
as a Sufferer, but always as the One who brings 
in a new era to the nation, and often, through 
the nation, to the world. 

That after the resurrection the 
"Jesus or Christ" disciples believed that Jesus of 

Nazareth was this long-fore- 
told and long-expected Messiah I should have 
thought unquestionable did not experience 
demonstrate that erudite theologians are able 
to question anything. The "Hibbert Journal" 
has recently published a series of papers entitled 
"Jesus or Christ, " the object of which is to show 
the different conceptions which different schools 
of thought attach to the word Christ. Father 
Tyrrell assures us that ' ' ' Christ ' now means the 
Second Person of the Trinity made man." To 
the Rev. R. Roberts, Christ "means an enriching 
and expanding ideal. " I do not deny the right 
of disputants to use words in any sense they 
choose so long as they define the sense in which 
they use them. My object in these papers is to 



64 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

interpret words as they were used by the dis- 
ciples of Jesus in the first century, and it is quite 
clear that the word Christ was not used by them 
to mean what either Father Tyrrell or what Mr. 
Roberts means by it. 

When the angel told the shepherds, "Unto you 
is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, 
which is Christ the Lord, " the shepherds neither 
understood him to mean that "the Second Per- 
son of the Trinity made man " was born nor that 
"an enriching and expanding ideal" was born; 
they understood him to mean that the promised 
Messiah was born. When Peter, replying to the 
question of Jesus, " Whom say ye that I am?" 
answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God. " he did not mean Thou art " the Sec- 
ond Person of the Trinity made man, " nor thou 
art "an enriching and expanding ideal." He 
meant, Thou art the promised Messiah. When 
Jesus met the disciples after the resurrection, 
on the way to Emmaus, and asked them, 
"Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, 
and to enter into his glory?" he did not mean, 
and they did not understand him to mean, 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 65 

Ought not "the Second Person of the Trinity 

made man" to suffer these things and enter into 

his glory, nor Ought not " an enriching and 

expanding ideal" to suffer these things and enter 

into his glory? but, Does not this suffering and 

this glorification fulfill what the Old Testament 

prophets had foretold of the Coming Messiah? 

When Saul, after his conversion, began his 

ministry in Damascus by proving that this is 

Christ, he did not prove, or attempt to prove 

that Jesus is " the Second Person of- the Trinity 

made man," nor that he is "an enriching and 

expanding ideal;" he attempted to prove that 

Jesus fulfilled the conditions of ancient prophecy 

and was the long-expected Messiah. 

This was difficult to prove. 

Christ's teaching p or t h e people wanted both 

concerning the r 

kingdom of God meager and immediate results. 

They wanted not the redemption 

of the world, but the redemption of Israel; they 

wanted their nation to become a world power, 

as Babylon had been and as Rome was; they 

wanted Jerusalem to be a world capital and their 

rulers to be world rulers. When Jesus told 



66 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

them that the kingdom was for pagans as well 
as for Jews, they mobbed him. And they 
wanted this kingdom brought to them, not 
wrought by them. They had no idea that it 
would require time and patience and costly 
endeavor. They looked for it to be brought 
about by a miraculous divine intervention — a 
Messiah coming in clouds and power and great 
glory, and his holy angels with him. Their ex- 
pectation was like that of Moses at the Red 
Sea: "Stand still, and see the salvation of the 
Lord. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye 
shall hold your peace. " And they had no liking 
for the reply of Jesus to this expectation, like the 
reply of Jehovah to Moses: "Wherefore criest 
thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, 
that they go forward. " 

But this was the burden of his teaching. You 
think, he said, that the kingdom of heaven will 
come suddenly. No! It will come up like a 
great tree which grows gradually out of a little 
seed. You think it will be brought to the earth 
by a supernatural power. No! It will grow like 
seed cast into the ground which grows the sower 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 6j 

knoweth not how; for the earth bringeth forth 
fruit of herself. You think it will come simply 
to Israel. No! It will come to any people who 
will receive it, and to no people who will not re- 
ceive it. For the hearts of the children of men 
are like soil, and if the seed falls on good soil 
it brings forth fruit, and if it falls on stony soil, 
which does not open to receive it, it brings forth 
no fruit. You think it will be done to you. No ! 
It must be wrought by you. It is like an estate 
left by an absentee landlord to be managed for 
him. God will often seem to you to be afar off, 
for he will put the responsibility of bringing 
about this kingdom upon you. You think 
it will come with great pomp and glory. No! 
It will come without observation; it will be 
here and you will not know it. You think it 
will be given to you without cost, as a great 
gift. No ! It will be purchased by you at a great 
sacrifice; like a pearl which, when one has found, 
he sells all that he has in order to get means 
wherewith to buy it. You think it will be 
rapturously welcomed. No ! When it is offered 
to you, you will all, with one consent, excuse 



68 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

yourself from accepting it. You think of it as 
something external, bestowed upon you. No! 
The kingdom of heaven is within you. 

It is true that there are occasionally to be 
found in the reported teachings of Jesus figures 
and phrases which have been taken by some 
scholars to indicate that Jesus shared the pop- 
ular idea of his time respecting the kingdom of 
God. But it is far more probable that these 
exceptional teachings are either capable of a 
different interpretation than that put upon 
them, 1 or are colored by the reporter's prepos- 
sessions, than that they are the uncolored re- 
port of the teachings of Jesus, and that the 
burden of the teachings as reported, which are 
largely devoted to correcting these misappre- 
hensions, originated with and reflected the 
prepossessions of the reporters. And it is 
certain that the burden of his ministry was 
what I have indicated above : that the kingdom 



i For example: "This generation shall not pass, till all these 
things be fulfilled." Matt. xxiv. 34. The word here rendered 
generation is equally capable of being rendered race or nation. See 
Alford's note on the passage. And the continuance of the Jewish 
people as a race or nation, without territory, capita^ or government 
would serve to confirm, not to negative, the prophecy here attri- 
buted to Jesus 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 69 

of God is dependent on individual character, and 
can only grow up gradually as individual character 
becomes conformed to the character of God. 

In his first sermon at Nazareth 

£?&££. J esus de P icted the ob J ect of his 

coming: it was to initiate this 
kingdom; to bring glad tidings to the poor, 
healing to the broken-hearted, deliverance to 
the captive, sight to the blind, liberty to the 
oppressed. In this sermon nothing is said, and 
nothing implied about a celestial kingdom 
hereafter. In his second sermon, preached 
at the time of the ordination of his twelve 
special helpers, Jesus made it clear that this 
glad tidings — healing, deliverance, liberty — 
could come only by the development of char- 
acter. Happiness cannot be conferred upon 
mankind, it must be developed in mankind. 
We are blessed if we are poor in spirit, meek, 
aspiring, full of mercy, pure in heart, peace- 
possessing and peace-giving. No mere obedi- 
ence to law will give us these qualities. No mere 
doing things for reward will give them to us. 
We 'receive them when we are the children of 



jo The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

our Father in heaven, and devote our lives to 
acquiring these qualities ourselves by our fellow- 
ship with him and imparting them to others 
by our fellowship with them. In the third 
great sermon, or series of sermons, the parable 
by the seashore, Jesus traced in a series of 
pictured symbols the gradual development of 
this new social order, based on personal char- 
acter conformed to the character of the Great 
Father. And in the fourth great sermon, that 
on the Bread of Life, preached at Capernaum, 
Jesus declared that the secret of such a char- 
acter is to be found in an intimate personal 
companionship with the Father, a spiritual liv- 
ing in him and by him through fellowship with 
his Son, the world's Messiah. 

The great hope which Jesus put before his 
disciples, and which he puts before us and would 
have us make the motive of our lives, is the king- 
dom of God on the earth. 

This kingdom of God, as Paul 

Paul's definition defines it, is a new social order 
of the 

kingdom of God pervaded by the spirit of right- 
eousness, peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost: righteousness, or the spirit of 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus Ji 

the Golden Rule, which inspires every man 
to put himself in his neighbor's place and to 
treat him as he would wish to be treated if 
they could change places; peace and good will, 
or the spirit of co-operation and mutual service, 
in lieu of that of strife and envying; and joy or 
universal welfare, founded on the spirit of 
righteousness and peace; the whole growing 
out of fellowship with God and participation 
in his life with him. This is what Jesus meant 
when he said, Be not divided in your mind, say- 
ing "What shall we eat? or, What shall we 
drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his right- 
eousness; and all these things shall be added 
unto you. " Jesus never said "Take no thought 
for the morrow," nor even, Be not anxious 
about the morrow; he said, Be not divided 
in your mind; give yourself with singleness of 
purpose to the service of life, and be content 
with what life brings you in return, whether it 
be riches or poverty, praise or blame, reward or 
persecution. 

There is only one thing worth living for: 



J2 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

namely, to make this world better worth living 
in. Impracticable? Not at all. Practicable; 
and often practiced. Practiced by D wight L. 
Moody, who gave himself to the preaching of 
Glad Tidings and asked for nothing, but took 
what was given to him. Practiced by General 
Armstrong, who gave his life to the education 
and elevation of an outcast race, and never asked 
anything for himself, yet did not starve. Prac- 
ticed by Dr. Grenfell, who sought out a people 
least known and cared for, that he might know 
them and care for them. 

Nor need one devote himself to a missionary 
life to realize this ideal. Of all the thousands 
who heard Jesus preach he called only twelve to 
leave their business and accept an apostolate. 
The rest he sent back into their life, inspired with 
a new understanding of life, a new hope for their 
fellow-men, a new faith in God. Nor did he 
merely preach; he fed the hungry, healed the 
sick, comforted the sorrowing, cheered the dis- 
couraged, taught the ignorant, lifted off the bur- 
den of the past from the despairing and sent 
them on their way rejoicing. Every railway 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 73 

man who helps to bind the country together by- 
iron bands, every manufacturer who helps to 
make shoes or clothing and distributes them far 
and wide for the benefit of mankind, every cook 
in the kitchen who makes the body a better ser- 
vant and better minister to the spiritual nature, 
is doing Christ's work. To be a follower of 
Christ is not to do great things; it is to do all 
things in a great spirit, the spirit of unselfish 
service. 

There is a theory that life is 

The four wholly evil, that the only escape 

philosophies 

of life from it is into a Nirvana of 

unconscious existence. This is 
Buddhism, the philosophy of suicide. This 
was not the teaching of Jesus. 

There is a theory that the world is wholly evil ; 
but that for a few there is escape into a future 
celestial happiness, while for the many there 
awaits a hopeless doom of oblivion or the still 
more hopeless doom of endless misery. This is 
mediaevalism, the philosophy of an eternal battle 
between good and evil. This was not the teach- 
ing of Jesus. 



74 The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 

There is a philosophy that human nature is 
essentially good, that the evils of life are due to 
defective social organization, that if we reform 
that all will be well. This is Socialism. This 
was not the teaching of Jesus. He was not a 
Socialist; he was not even a reformer. He did 
almost nothing to re-form the forms of social 
organism, political or individual, of his day. 

There is a faith that God is in his world making 
it better, making out of the common men and 
women, such as we are, beings worthy to be 
called the children of the Most High. This was 
the teaching of Jesus. 

To work with the Father in making this world 
a better world to live in, he taught was the only 
life worth living. To give one's self wholly and 
without reserve to such a life he taught was 
religion. To live soberly is to take all material 
things which will help such a life and to reject all 
things which will hinder it. To live righteously 
is to do unto others as we would have others do 
unto us, and to love one another as Christ loved 
us. To live godly is to give our whole life, all 
that we have and all that we are, to working with 



The Ethical Teachings of Jesus 75 

our Father that we may fulfill our Father's will. 
To be inspired by the great hope is to live in the 
assurance that at last our Father will accomplish 
his purpose in bringing about among men a social 
order of righteousness, peace, and universal wel- 
fare founded on fellowship with him. So to live, 
inspired by this hope and in comradeship with 
our Father, as to make this world, and each of us 
our little world, a better and a happier world for 
our having lived in it — this is the religion of 
Jesus the Christ. 



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